Disclaimer: In 2013 I reviewed the second half of Series 7 for The Hairy Housewife and fully intended to do the same for Series 8 last year. Unfortunately, it proved impossible. Life and work and caring responsibilities called and at my lowest point, I was about five episodes behind everyone else. After speaking recently with Gemma, she thought it would be cool for me to do a re-tread of Series 8 to tide blog readers over until Series 9 airs. So that’s what’s happening. Every week I’ll re-watch and review an episode for this blog. Feel free to join me! Oh, and there will be spoilers.

Into The Dalek tells the story of soldiers who ask The Doctor to go inside a Dalek to find out what is making it malfunction and become ‘a good Dalek.’ (Aside: Was the Dalek called Rusty as an in-joke reference to RTD’s fandom nickname? Inquiring minds want to know.) We are also treated to a bonus companion who never was, Journey Blue, and the deepening of Clara’s relationship with Danny and with The Doctor. Now that Twelve has been established, the second episode also serves to deepen his characterization as a grumpy old man reminiscent of One. The Doctor is rude to Journey Blue, even in the face of her brother’s death (And his sister isn’t [dead]. You’re welcome), is callous when people die inside the Dalek, and (in one of the few bum notes of series 8 and this particular episode) tells Clara that she looks old and ugly. It is a change from the young magic man Eleven. However, there is continuity too. Namely, that The Doctor always cares about being a good man, and always feels conflicted about soldiers and warring.

It’s interesting that this episode contains so many important themes which resurface in a big way in the finale. Though the episodes are nothing alike, I was reminded of The Beast Below.The Beast Below established Series 5’s fairy story vibe, the importance of dreams and belief to Amy and her relationship with The Doctor and Eleven’s true character – he doesn’t interfere in people or planets unless there’s children crying. Similarly, Into the Dalek establishes the soldier theme, including The Doctor as soldier, and the importance of trying to be something rather than worrying about if you are or are not that thing all of which is addressed in Death in Heaven. As a fun aside, the scene where Clara and The Doctor slide down the Dalek’s feeding tube and land in digested bodies has a lot in common with The Beast Below when Amy and The Doctor fall into the beast’s stomach.

Anyway, for every good Dalek-centric episode (Dalek, Asylum of the Daleks, Day of the Doctor etc) there are rubbish ones (Victory of the Daleks, Evolution of the Daleks/Daleks in Manhatten etc). Though Into the Dalek is by no means perfect, it is at least an interesting Dalek episode. The main reason for this is its exploration of the soldier theme which is to become so important in the finale. Danny Pink is introduced as a Maths teacher with a background in soldiery (Is it coincidence that both Journey Blue and Danny Pink are soldiers with color last names?). We see Danny teach PE military style and then teach Maths to questions of, ‘Have you ever killed anyone who wasn’t a soldier?’ (this comes back to bite Danny in Dark Water). Danny is a different kind of soldier. Clara says as a joke in response to his assertions of morality, ‘Ah, you shoot people and then cry about it later.’ There is a moral dimension to being Danny’s kind of soldier, and presumably Journey Blue’s too (though The Doctor doesn’t learn this until Death in Heaven). He mistakenly says ‘crying is for civilians… we cry so you don’t have to,’ except we know that this isn’t true, because Danny the soldier man does cry, even if only on the inside, and we see it happen as he is questioned in his classroom.

This Doctor is a contradiction and an enigma. He doesn’t like soldiers, to the point of telling Journey Blue, ‘I think you’re probably nice. Underneath it all I think you’re kind. You’re definitely brave. I just wish you hadn’t been a soldier,’ but at the same time he needs confirmation from a flummoxed Clara that he is indeed a good man, and not, as the Dalek tells him, a good Dalek, a good hater, a good soldier, a believer of beauty in hate. Moffat reminds us again why The Doctor needs humans. The Doctor needs his humans to remind him why he isn’t like a Dalek.

Clara: I’m his carer.
The Doctor: Yeah, she cares so I don’t have to.

The Doctor says he does one better and saves souls as well as lives, but he is only able to do this because of human companions like Clara. It is for this reason that I agree with Moffat and think that the companion story is so vital to Doctor Who. Clara reminds The Doctor that the point isn’t that there was a Dalek and it malfunctioned so appeared good. The point was that for a single moment in time, The Doctor believed that there was a good Dalek. Or to put it another way, it doesn’t matter if you are or are not a good person, what matters is that you believe in becoming a good person. There is so much awesome in Clara being a teacher. Not only does she teach an English classroom in the show, she is the audience’s teacher too:

Clara: I don’t know.
The Doctor: I’m sorry?
Clara: You asked me if you were a good man and the answer is, I don’t know. But I think you try to be and I think that’s probably the point.
The Doctor: I think you’re probably an amazing teacher.
Clara: I think I’d better be.

This episode shows us that The Doctor has changed. He is old and grumpy and acerbic and irritable and touchy on the subject of soldiers, but he is still trying to be a good man. Ultimately, he is still a mad man with a box gallivanting around space and time trying to do his best. Gretchen reminds us of this, even as her sacrifice also reminds us of why The Doctor comes back for humans every single time:

Gretchen: Is he mad or is he right?
Clara: Hand on my heart – most days he’s both.
Gretchen: Gretchen Alison Carlisle. Do something good and name it after me.
The Doctor: I will do something amazing. I promise.
Gretchen: Damn well better.

Into The Dalek is a surprisingly complex and interesting Who adventure which firmly sets up themes for the rest of series 8.

Disclaimer: In 2013 I reviewed the second half of Series 7 for this blog and fully intended to do the same for Series 8 last year. Unfortunately, it proved impossible. Life and work and caring responsibilities called and at my lowest point, I was about five episodes behind everyone else. After speaking recently with Gemma, she thought it would be cool for me to do a re-tread of Series 8 to tide blog readers over until Series 9 airs. So that’s what’s happening. Every week I’ll re-watch and review an episode for this blog. Feel free to join me! Oh, and there will be spoilers.

Deep Breath served as Peter Capaldi’s debut episode (The Day of The Doctor and The Time of the Doctor don’t count) much as The Eleventh Hour was Matt’s. This time around the pressure was less intense. Moffat had to sell a new Doctor, companion and head writer team in The Eleventh Hour after essentially being sabotaged by RTD in The End of Time. Indeed, so great was the pressure on Moffat, last year he revealed in interviews that the BBC would have cancelled the show if Matt had not been a success after the enormous success of Tennant. Luckily, Moffat succeeded enormously and The Eleventh Hour is still one of the best debut episodes for a Doctor ever in my opinion, possibly even the very best. Deep Breath and by extension Capaldi at least had the advantage of a stable companion in Clara and a stable writing and production team. Still, selling a new Doctor is always a challenge (even if true fans end up loving each and every one anyway) and on top of that, Moffat was dealing with criticisms of his ‘impossible girl’ in the previous season which meant that he wanted to improve on characterization in the new series. He also still had to contend with a growing international and new to Who audience, not all of whom were familiar with regeneration.

To meet this challenge, Moffat settles for telling two stories in one on an extended run time. The story of the week follows The Doctor, Clara and Paternoster Row’s adventures as they try to understand why dinosaurs and humans alike are being disintegrated in London and why a restaurant is filled with clockwork people. At the same time, Clara tries to come to grips with her young looking Doctor wearing an ancient face and learns some lessons about appearance courtesy of Jenny and Vastra. Deep Breath also sets the series up to be a series about relationships, particularly the friendship between Clara and The Doctor (they describe each other this episode as ‘ego-maniac, needy, game-player’ types)

Perhaps because so much is going on, and because of the slightly extended run-time, the episode never quite hangs together. It also suffers from Moffat excess along the lines of Let’s Kill Hitler and The Wedding of River Song, especially initially with the first arrival of Twelve via a dinosaur’s mouth. The episode only really starts to work when Clara and The Doctor meet in the restaurant after each thinking the other has left a message in the paper for the other. However, thanks to the presence of Vastra, Jenny and Strax and Moffat’s talent for dialogue, there are some beautifully quiet dramatic moments which set the tone for the rest of the series. I especially liked Vastra’s assertion of, ‘Well then. Here we go again,’ as a manic Doctor exhausts them all and the scene where Clara speaks with Vastra in her private boudoir intercut with The Doctor linking with the dinosaur’s thoughts (I am alone – a statement true of both the dinosaur and The Doctor at this point).

I have always said that Moffat enjoys post modern literary conceits, and this is especially obvious in Deep Breath’s early scenes, where Moffat uses his characters (predominantly Vastra) to try and win the audience over to Twelve. When Vastra says, ‘he looked young for everyone, wore a face like I wear a veil…’ as a reminder to the audience that The Doctor’s face (or actor) changes, but the inner personality remains the same. Vastra reminds us here that though the audience accepted a younger Doctor, romance and play time is over. The Doctor has travelled for untold centuries. It is time he looked like it. This post modern conceit led to one of the best moment’s of the whole episode:

Vastra: I wear a veil as he wore a face, for the same reason. … I do not wear it as a courtesy to such people, but as a judgment on the quality of their hearts.

Vastra is saying this ostensibly to Clara, but also to the audience. That’s also the case with Eleven’s final message at the tail end of the episode. He tells Clara to accept The Doctor for his sake, but he is asking the audience to do the same. It is a conceit which is sweet, if slightly over done.

In contrast, when ‘the game is afoot’ and Mancinni’s restaurant enters the story, everything becomes much more interesting. It turns out the robots are stealing parts to keep on keeping on and are members of a sister ship to Madame de Pompadour’s from The Girl in the Fireplace. The return of these aliens allows us to see how Twelve works (by asking the right intellectual questions), fight scenes, Clara’s faith in The Doctor despite her fears (he’ll have my back), Clara’s personality (I particularly liked the way she remembered her first day teaching at school and applied her teaching experience to outsmarting the clockwork robot) even a kiss between Vastra and Jenny (I never get enough of these two!) and finally confirmation that this Doctor is made of morally tougher stuff. Eleven had dark and frightening edges that came out when he was mad. This Doctor is full of righteous rage and moral ambiguity. This time we can’t be sure that he is indeed a hero and a good man. Didn’t he push a robot man to his death after all?

Finally, the episode introduces us to ‘Paradise’ or ‘Heaven’ and Michelle Gomez’ deliciously sharp Mary Poppins turn as Missy. When I initially saw this episode, Twelve still wasn’t quite gelling for me and I’d never been sold on Clara as companion, but I was fascinated by Missy and I knew I’d be back for more solely out of curiosity. My end reaction was, ‘damn it Moffat. Why are you so good at pulling viewers in even when they aren’t particularly emotionally invested in your two main characters?’ On re-watches, I enjoy both Clara and The Doctor a whole lot more now that I know where the series goes. I especially enjoy their budding friendship. I still think the story is overcrowded though.

Along with this healthier, alcohol-free lifestyle that I’m living, I had one of my Grand Ideas. And that Grand Idea was…

BAKING!

*Ding!*

So, like the well-prepared little person I’m not (and I really am not – you only have to ask my sister) I raided Amazon and came up with some essential goodies. A mixing bowl, cake tins, storage tins, a few books on baking and one on icing (I’m doing fondant icing for D’s birthday cake next month and need some pointers).

Before anything could happen, of course, ingredients were needed. So off I trotted to have a nervous breakdown in Sainsbury’s.

Truly, I detest supermarkets. Whose idea was it to build enormous places full of food and allow people to run riot in them? Why don’t shopping trolleys come equipped with indicators? Would your average Half Asleep Dimwit (do they invade all local supermarkets, or do they just live in mine?) even know what the flashy-blinky light thingy actually meant, if trollies posessed them? The individual who ran over my foot wouldn’t have noticed if I’d grabbed a wet trout from the fish counter and whacked him with it. But that’s a horrible way to treat a poor defenceless dead thing (I mean the fish, not the Half Brained Numpty). I don’t care if I forgot half of what I need for D’s birthday cake (and I almost certainly did) because I am never going to Sainsbury’s again! Unless there’s a shiny new tarantula in it for me as a reward, or Johnny Depp has been spotted in the whisky aisle without his horrible whiny fiancee tagging along. No. Nuh Uh. A night with The Blobbendales would be more appealing than another hour in Sainsbury’s.

Anyway. Bread. Yes. For this you need the following:

One Hairy Baker.

A Hairy Baker and her mixing bowl.

There, that should do it!

Throw Stuff into mixing bowl and, um… mix together until you have sticky gloop. Wait twenty minutes, then remove the sticky gloop from your bowl and pummel the crap out of it for twenty minutes. Apologise to it, then wait an hour and a half until you have this:

Air bubbles held together with Stuff Wot You Made From Gloop

Throw it around some more, until you have a basic bread shape. Sculpt a willy on it and see if anybody notices (they didn’t).

After allowing it to prove some more you’ll end up with this:

It’s absorbed the baking tray! Hey, what happened to my willy?!!

Shove it into the oven after maybe about an hour of letting it grow, and you end up with something like this:

And here we have it – my first ever attempt at bread! I used a very basic recipe and am excited to learn more techniques, but – given that I’ve never made a loaf of bread before in my life – I’m really very pleased with this.

I think that, next time, I’d like to sculpt it so that it’s rounder and taller, but this will be a welcome accompaniment to D’s homemade soups. Or stew. Or maybe I could just break a hunk off, smother it in lovely butter (I’m enjoying dairy produce again, now that I know I was never lactose intolerant in the first place – but that’s another story for another time) and eat it with a mug of cocoa if we run out of crumpets.

In short (too late!) I feel that this is far more productive than nursing a bottle of wine and swearing at the TV. More kitchen shenanigans shall follow!

Which reminds me; the batch of red cabbage I pickled before Christmas is the best I’ve ever done. Probably because I remembered the spices this time.

Well I couldn’t very well remain “The Rose Wine Lover” now that I’m teetotal, could I? That would make no sense whatsoever, even to a mind as random as my own; and so The Hairy Housewife has been born (regenerated?) from the ashes of my old life instead.

So… where exactly should I begin, under this new name? I suppose I ought to begin with the past weekend, visiting my family.

This was the first time I’d been away from home since my hospitalisation and recovery, so it was extremely tiring – but, as always, worth it. After we’d settled into our room at Hope Orchard (where we always stay) my Mum opened her house to us for stonebaked pizza with garlic bread, and drinks for those who wanted. I’m perfectly happy with tonic water and cranberry juice, but have no objections to the husband-shape having the occasional beer. Why should I? Besides, it is Christmas! My sister also dropped by, as we hadn’t seen each other closer to my birthday as planned – due to my health – and we do miss each other, living on different sides of the U.K as we do. Next year I’d like to plan a few weekends that are just about my sister and I, rather than trying to squeeze everybody and everything into one weekend (these visits will also, of course, encompass my parents).

My son is as well as can be expected; he still resides in the same residential college/unit as before, but will be transferred next summer when he is nineteen. He is to have an operation soon, which I would sooner not speak about now because the time schedule for this is not as yet in place. Suffice to say that he will be seeing an end to what may very well be an entire lifetime of considerable pain.

As you can see here, the weather could have been better (we were driving home at this point, but the entire weekend in Cheltenham had included temperatures of freezing or below). Thankfully I recently gutted my entire wardrobe due to my change in weight (it was truly amazing just how little there was of me hidden underneath all of that hideous, agonising ascites) and my new purchases include extremely warm and cozy jumpers, along with new jeans; I’ve not worn jeans for years because I was generally ill and uncomfortable and couldn’t stand to have anything buttoned across my stomach and it actually feels quite marvellous to be able to slip them on again.

Finally, on to the main question that I know you’ve all been wanting to ask:

What Have I Been Doing Since Being Teetotal?

Truthfully… not an awful lot. Mostly recovering, eating and regaining my strength (now sorely depleted again after the weekend, so much sleeping is currently on the agenda). I’ve been caring for my tarantulas, doing a little bit of tidying here and there, clearing my wardrobe and my section of the chest of drawers of unwanted/rendered useless clothing (and being messed about by time wasters on Freecycle as a result) and have even resumed my pickling hobby!

I am also making a return to baking, after at least eighteen years away from it. As a child I used to do a lot of baking with my grandmother, and have recently found myself missing her home made Welsh cakes, and a new-found love of cakes in general (which can be blamed on my Mother-In-Law). Hence the purchase of some books on baking (my Good Housekeeping Cook Book from 1987 doesn’t have recipes for anything my grandmother ever taught me!), an apron and a large stonewear mixing bowl; my grandmother actually gave me such a mixing bowl as a gift for my first home, but it was sadly broken in transit during one of my many house moves. Recipes for carrot cake, Welsh cakes, boiled fruit cake and a few other old favourites have been found online and printed off, and all that’s missing now is the ingredients, which I see no point in buying until I actually have all the utensils to hand – and books, of course; just because… well, because they’re cookery books and you can never have too many of those.

I have also discovered that I am not actually lactose intolerant as always believed – even that was a side effect of having a dodgy liver – and so I have taken to drinking hot chocolate before bed again. I am very much looking forward to baking my first batch of biscuits to go with it.

I have learned a lot over this past year – mostly about myself and my own body. I have literally conquered Death, come back fighting and reset my priorities. My interests have changed. I have changed.

And all of it is for the better. Contentment is in every waking moment now, and I feel blessed by my home, my husband’s heart and my wonderful family.

Yesterday I paid my first visit to my liver specialist, to see how I’ve been progressing since I left hospital in September, and things are looking so good that there may not even be a need for me to have a liver transplant. I half-jokingly asked if he still thinks I only have six months, upon which he grinned somewhat sheepishly and replied that actually no; he thinks I have a good deal longer. I intend to make that years longer, thank you very much: twenty-five more years would be nice. Perhaps even thirty.

This , however – whilst all-round good news – is not what I have come here to write about. I would like to talk about a tiny little spider named Hexadecimal, without whom I may not be here now – or would at least still be in bed, believing myself to be far sicker than I actually am. Continue reading →

To all intents and purposes, I should be dead. I’m supposed to have died that night in August, when I haemorrhaged and was taken to A&E. I should have left hospital in a box – not in the passenger seat of my husband’s car, exhausted but alive.

Sitting in your living room admiring your tarantulas, being cuddled by your husband and eating your way through delicious meals when you found yourself unable to bear the thought of food due to your medical condition at one time really does serve to ram this one simple fact home.

I should be dead.

I have touched the very Veil; even parted it like a shimmering, ghostly curtain, and seen the other side – the Afterlife. Nobody is supposed to come back from that, and yet here I am. For reasons known only to the Gods, I have been given another chance. It is a very humbling honour that seems to be bestowed on only a few.

Knowing that you should no longer be of this earthly plane changes you. For me, waking up every morning and checking the weather is a miracle. It’s one more day on this beautiful planet that mustn’t be wasted – even if currently my main contact with the outside world is through the internet. I no longer touch alcohol, and I approach food with relish and enjoyment, as opposed to simply eating because I must. It’s a pleasure again. Every week I look younger and fuller in the face; every week I achieve something that I was unable to do even six months ago.

I take nothing for granted; every new day is a gift, as is whatever the day has to offer. I am planning an inexpensive, simple, teetotal Christmas and revelling in it. I shall be thanking my Gods, and making a toast to whoever donated their blood to save me. I wish the donors responsible could know that I’m here to enjoy another Yule because of them.

One other thing I’ve learned? Death isn’t to be feared; in fact, he’s rather a pleasant chap who obviously decided at the last moment that this isn’t my time.

That’s what he’s said to me every day since he had The Dream. “Stay on the train”.

The Dream:

He says we were on the train that crosses the Channel Tunnel. I became confused and alighted several stops too soon – then, as he searched for me, I disappeared from sight. I knew what the dream meant; I’d known for some time. Continue reading →

When you look through a telescope you witness the entire world expanding. You can see past the horizon, or you can see planets hiding out among the stars that you are unable to see with the naked eye alone. Truly a wonderful invention.

Now take this very same wonderful invention and turn it the other way around. Suddenly, your sphere of existence narrows to a pinprick. No horizon, no stars, just… nothing. Just you, isolated and alone, unable to see what’s in front of you.

That’s very much how it is when a doctor tells you that your body is essentially disintegrating and that you are dying.

Oh don’t worry; I don’t plan on going anywhere yet. I was born with the Morris fight and the Knight fire flowing through my veins. I probably have a good 20+ years in me yet – it just might be a painful 20+ years. I’m used to pain and I’ll handle it like a trooper. I won’t let my Nan down and just give in. The genes I inherited are not healthy ones, and I’ve always known that. It was only a matter of time, really, before a doctor was going to deliver the news that my body is failing. Continue reading →

Excuse me? I’m here because I’ve been vomiting blood and you want to talk about my eye?

To do a quick rewind: I was put on Naproxen for the pain in my feet. Not only did it not help in the pain department, but mysterious bruises began to pop up all over my body.

Last Thursday I woke up, got out of bed and struggled down the stairs. The moment I sat down, Dom asked me what on earth I’d done to my eye. Well, I hadn’t done anything to it at all; I hadn’t fallen over, I’d not thumped myself in my sleep (which I am apparently quite prone to doing) and certainly nothing had happened to drive my glasses into my face. Continue reading →

My doctor’s eyebrows shot up considerably when I mentioned that I was used to Restless Leg Syndrome. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember – that itching, burning, tickling, almost-pain coming from inside my limbs – and so I couldn’t quite fathom the possible significance of this. I would soon find out.Continue reading →

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